The Master and Margarita | Mikhail Bulgakov | A peerless work of Russian literature, but Reader...

The Master and Margarita | Mikhail Bulgakov | Master and Margarita

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The Master and Mar...

	The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov Vintage, 1996 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 341 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A peerless work of Russian literature, but Reader beware! Bad translations abound!

Michael Glenny's 1967 translation of Mikhail Bulgakov's preeminent masterpiece is still indisputably the best available in English. Far inferior translations feature much more prominently in bookstores and in internet book search results, which is really too bad for the unwitting reader who would otherwise be in for quite a treat.

Although some of Glenny's opening paragraphs sound awkward, every other translation I've come across butchers the rich, humor-laden language of this fantastical and brilliant tale, which is probably the most important piece of Russian literature written during the last century.

For example, while it's great for the English reader to know that Bezdomny's name means "Homeless" in Russian, several English translations go so far as to stupidly render his name as "Ivan Homeless"or just "Homeless." Why not just go all the way and call him "John Homeless" while you're at it? John is the English equivalent of Ivan after all. And while you're at it, why not just make the whole story take place the United States or England instead of Russia?

While no translation can be expected to render the full glory of the original Russian, the myopic and fatuous work of lesser translators exacts a ruinous toll on countless passages, squandering the joy,humor and sheer wit of Bulgakov's writing and mangling the brilliant tale.

If you doubt me, simply compare for yourself. Take for example the scene in the end of Chapter 5: "The Affair at Griboyedov." Glenny's rendition remains true to Bulgakov's sidesplittingly funny language. Here, Bezdomny addresses the psychiatrists at the mental hospital, where he's been admitted following an encounter with the Devil, who Bezdomny had thought was a foreign Professor:

"Now look, everybody--ring up the police at once and tell them to send five motorcycles and sidecars with machine-guns to catch the professor. And don't forget to say that there are two others with him--a tall fellow in checks with a wobbly pince-nez and a great black cat. . . ."

The translations by M Ginsburg, Pevear & Volokhonsky, Burgin & O'Conner, and others simply don't measure up. Take my advice and read Glenny's version, it's available only in softcover hardback as the "Everyman's Library edition" from Amazon, or find one of the other out-of-print Glenny translations, originally issued in 1967 by Collins and Harvill Press, London. Enjoy!

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Master and Margarita

Arrived in great condition. I read this years ago and am now enjoying the escapade again.

Highly recommend it!!!

A rare gem of the 20th century literature

The book combines the rich character development of Dostoevsky and the mysticism of Coelho. The plot is carefully planned out and very intelligently interwoven into the character development. The master and Margarita is Bulgakov's masterpiece: here is a guy that abandoned his career as a doctor to suffer the paranoia of censorship. The frustration and the surrealism that Bulgakov had to face is filtered into the book. However, the book remains masterfully balanced and the ideas are potent and mature. The book is a feast for both the mind and the soul. I highly recommend it!

However be warned that if you don't like classic Russian lit. (e.g., Dostoevsky) this book is not for you. Some people might also be untouched by the inner fight of the heroes and find the pace slow. Even for these people the book is a decent read for its intellectual merit (Pontius Pilate/Faust story-lines).

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Grotesque Comedy

Although I respected THE MASTER AND MARGARITA, I found it difficult to read. The main difficulty for me here is the same one I have with virtually all Russian literature. And that is the names. All the characters have at least three names. Sometimes they are called by all three names, sometimes by two of them and sometimes by only one name. At other times they will be referred to by nickname. This often occurs in the same paragraph. I constantly had to keep looking back through the book to figure out who was who. The other difficulty for me is that there are so many characters and the story keeps skipping between them, so that no story line is allowed to gain much momentum, even though the book is action packed. This is a heavily ironic comedy about the devil coming to a society that is not supposed to believe in either devils or deities. Of course, wherever the devil goes, there's going to be trouble. The events of the novel are tumultuous and horrifying, including two beheadings, Christ's crucifixion, massive fires in crowded buildings, earthquakes, etc. And all the horrifying events are spectacular events, performed before an audience.

Probably the hardest things to translate in any language are jokes, and this book is full of them. But nonetheless I found this translation to be quite smooth and I very much appreciated the detailed notes and the extremely helpful afterword by Ellendea Proffer. It was here that I learned that Bulgakov was primarily a playwright of the 1920s. His novel was suppressed for thirty years and was not published until after his death. Now I very much want to read his plays.

I'm sure that there were elements of the book that I didn't get and will never get simply because I'm not a Russian. And it probably loses a lot in translation. (No language can ever truly capture the subtleties of another.) But the story is animated by a very off-the-wall sensibility that's going to be there in any language. Bulgakov's was an interesting mind. This is a book in which a happy ending is going to hell.

I think THE MASTER AND MARGARITA is an important work of 20th Century literature and is certainly worth reading, even if it's work at times.

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